World War Z
by Kirbilius Clausius
Summary: Pasadena was technically inside the safe zone. Noblesse Oblige requires.


_**I'm sitting in a typical pre-war chair arranged typically with the pre-war couch. Nobel laureate, Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler's home was west of the Rocky Mountain Line and nearly everything domestic in the room was moved from her home to the think tank's offices. The apartment is incredibly generic, especially for a pre-war home. **__****__**The main piece of the room makes up for it.**_ Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz and Howard "Froot Loops" Wolowitz use the chore of washing dishes to flirt, their love obvious. 

**How did you get the resources for your endeavor?**

How did a couple of F-6s like us get bumped up to F-2s? (1) That's your real question. We started with the resources. Howie's pre-war job was based in a department in this very building. The think tank's major resource also predated the war. Bernie's the youngest of us but was already engaged in post-doctorate projects in the private sector years before the war. Howie's abilities were already refined and that's what resulted in his contacts within the space community. I was published regularly. While the rest of the country was rushing into our homes and community, we were already armed for the reason you're interviewing me. What we weren't was prepared.

**How so?**

The same way everyone else wasn't. I only knew one person smart enough to have a plan for the crisis-including the Great Panic. Fat lot of good it did him.

**You're referring to Dr. Cooper?**

Yes. Sheldon managed to have a plan for not only riding out the war. He had pre-packed supplies in carefully marked packs. It was the first thing he did to save us.

I just wished it had saved him. We all do. Well, maybe not Howie.

_**"Froot Loops" objects vehemently before realizing that Dr. Fowler's dry tone is**** joking**_**.**

His room mate infected him. That winter the Great Panic hit...We all were covered for Phalanx except my bestie. There was no reason for Dr. Hofsteador to believe he was in danger, let alone a danger to anyone. He wasn't even bitten.

Dr. Hofsteador had been in an automobile accident and needed a blood transfusion. With the problems that were arising and the fact that he was supposed to be inoculated Dr. Hofsteador acted appropriately with the options she had at the time. (2) The 'facts on the ground', if you will as opposed to hind-sight.

**But if he was infected via blood tran**

**_She cuts me_**_** off**.__  
_

That was the actual horror of it. In approving the transfusion, she approved any other organ acceptance such as the skin graft. That was the source. And with such a small amount of localized tissue that also exudes much of its waste outside of the blood stream...

Sheldon honored their room mate agreement. Even though he was such a germaphobe that it snowballed into haptophobia. And even with his typical precautions: surgical mask, gloves... He wasn't infected the entire time he cared for Dr. Hofsteador. Phalanx had told my Sheldon that his room mate had nothing more than a hard to shake flu. Without the tell tale bite...

By then, things had gotten really, really bad. Then the last step in truly creating a Great Panic occured.

**Yonkers.**

No. Yonkers was a great tragedy, but Americans comforted each other after 9/11, Pearl Harbor and the like. They didn't turn on each other. It was that celebrity house show. People watched celebrity reality to invoke feelings of superiority without merit. Remember how many watched Jersey Shore and were just as drunk or uneducated as the people showcased? (3) That requires putting the people you're watching outside of your tribal grouping...Sorry, for getting anthropological.

**Quite alright, Dr. In your own words. I'll add foot notes in needed.**

Alright.

The phenomenon requires viewing the people as different. The same assumptions that allowed teenagers to endanger themselves. The same presuppositions that allow armies to see the other side as monsters...before they actually were, anyway. This detachment, this cognitive dissonance married to disassociation allowed those types of shows to be entertainment.

When the celebrity house was over run, it wasn't by the undead. It was by Americana. It was a complete disaster with the worst of humanity laid bare. People famous for being famous and therefore rich shooting infants because their mothers were using them as guilt trip human shielding to force their way in to the only place they knew had clean water... I'm sorry. It's just the image that stuck with me the most as it played on so many lobes of the brain simultaneously. That was a group of people that the average, everyday American could empathize with. They didn't have a walled fortress. They had mouths to feed and the dead encroaching any minute and no plan. You can name every celebrity-that's what makes them celebrities. There once was 313,000,000 Americans.

They realized that they were exactly the type of people to be wrestling with a football player for a bottle of juice because they spent their entire lives getting twelve dollars an hour and spending a hundred of them to sit in a stadium with all the others watching that athlete play a more complex game of catch. And that bottle of juice was going to save them, for a short while, from dehydration. Not disease since the most dangerous profession became health care after the infected were brought to medical professionals first. Not starvation since harvesting plants that towered over human height could hide any number of walking corpses. Not exposure to the elements due to the zombie penchant for pounding on all but the most resilient shelter until they gave way. Let alone the undead themselves hungering for their very flesh.

That's when the Great Panic started.

Sheldon was a very smart man, and nothing was average about him. That's how he saved us. He had bags of survival gear, compound bow weaponry...and it was all maintained.

**Maintained?**

Yes, he had this all worked out. And a million other scenarios. I suppose I should be...grateful it wasn't one of another million things that he saved me..and all my friends...

Give me a moment.

_**Dr. Fowler gets up from the couch. She shares a hug with Dr. Wolowitz-Rostenkowski and "Froot Loops". She returns after a moment. Her expression hasn't changed from the shell-shocked look she has had this entire time. Before today, she had assured me that it wasn't in response to the war. She showed me pictures from her childhood to prove her point.**_

I'm sorry.

Sheldon at least realized he was infected. Of all the things I was expecting, he managed to surprise me again. I was prepared to remain by his side to the end. And if I was inadequate, do my best to get him back to his family before the end. But he forced me to be the person I should have been rather than the one I wanted to be.

I had a unique opportunity. Sheldon was one of a very few that had his level of brain activity.

**There's been no evidence presented that zombies retain any of their previous thought patterns.**

You're quoting my work.

No.

Why I mentioned his brain activity is that it showed up on brain scans. And it was outside the ordinary enough to warrant scanning. It became one of his hobbies. While I know some have tried to put the reanimated under an MRI with varying results and...security issues, none had a baseline to work from. We so rarely have healthy brain scans anyway, as most people only have them done after a medical issue has been diagnosed. I was the only person in the position that befell me: I could watch the entire sequence unfold before me and have a history of the very mind in its healthy state.

All I had to do was watch the man I love die before me.

**Is that why...he? He's here?**

Please, don't call this thing a 'he'. Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper died 3 days after infection. He simply had a clause in his relationship agreement with me that I couldn't deanimate his corpse should he ever become a zombie.

**Didn't he realize from the reports**

_**Dr. Fowler cuts me off again.**_

You don't get it. He wrote that document years before the war. It was the last clause in the document I thought would have the least of my concern. On the other hand, it said nothing about studying or even containing him. So while I am confident that the straight jacket and other restraints it's welded into are more than adequate to keep him from harming anyone, I didn't object when it was entombed in the synthetic polymer sarcophagus. Yes, it is transparent. But I am told that the shell can withstand a point blank M-79 discharge.

It is one of the very few reanimated allowed to continue in that state, along with some that the Army uses for canine unit training. I would prefer to reduce the entire thing to ashes and if singularity based resurrections become possible, base Sheldon's on my memoirs and some of his uninfected hair that I happen to abscond with while he slept.

On the other hand, he was right. That should count for something.

_**The zombie hasn't stopped chomping at the bit since I came into the apartment, literally. What looks very much like a mime's invisible box hasn't moved an iota despite the lanky zombie's thrashing. Fortunately for myself, the box also appears sound proof as a by product of its construction.**_

We all banded around Sheldon's call to duty. Those of us left alive, anyway.

We were incredibly lucky. The other faculty had vacated the facility. Kripke, Winkle, even Gablehauser, all had made the migration to Silicon Valley a month earlier. With Winkle and Kripke both credited on DARPA's anti-missile laser programs, they added credibility to the super weapon projects that popped up across the area. Anyone that had any idea of the resources available already had a better thing going.

With Sheldon's packs, we had enough MREs to stretch through winter if we were careful. No one had looted the building in their evacuation for anything other than their own research notes, so we had the faculty cafeteria in the basement to ourselves. On top of that plumbing, heating...all the things that allowed life to continue.

**What about electricity?**

We do not have a nuclear reactor in this building. There is no reason to suspect such.

**I didn't say that.**

Good.

Moving on.

Howie didn't even have to rig up an MRI machine. We just brought Sheldon to the geology department and strapped him down and watched him all the way through. Between having a history and watching the entire process unfold, I was able to prove the motivation mechanisms present in the undead.

As with all pre-understood phenomena, there were a barrage of conjectures parading as information. People wanted to project some semblance of humanity upon the undead and tried to justify their actions with ethical acrobatics. Others wanted to cast them as the enemy and ascribed hatred and tactics. Zombies are addicted to eating the flesh of the living. There behavior is that of an addict. They can never get enough. They are always chasing the next greater high. In fact, that's why some have been observed to be feeding on a downed victim and turn to attack the living observer. Even when that observer is armed and armored, far or a host of other factors that make him a more difficult prey. Chasing the dragon as it were.

However, what we needed, what all humanity needed was to get that knowledge into the war effort.

**And hence your reassessments.**

Yes. This research started before the west coast was declared a safe zone. But it was research, and we had to be painstakingly exact. There were so many competing voices out there. And they all had a pedigree of getting people to be able to agree with them without a shred of evidence: clergy, politicians, opportunistic advertising executives, cheer leaders... Also, human nature hadn't changed in the living. People thought there would be great power over others in 'being the one with the answers' even if they hadn't a clue. Misinformation ranged from mediums claiming to be zombie whisperers to the despicable 'virgin cleansing' rapes.

Fortunately, we had Howie. It was his ability to actually coordinate with the ISS and Radio Free World that moved me into a more...sociological application of my work. We had access to the satellite feeds from weather, scientific and, with the crisis, military views. We had Bernadette's expertise in vector spreading and my own experience in primate addiction and destructive behavior. Coupling that with analyzing their movements by addict behavior patterns rather than an opposing army's, I could predict motions of groups numbering above 40,000 within 10 Km the following day.

It took a lot of processing: taking into account geography for ease of travel, weather dispersing or bringing scents of the living, chaos mechanics... On the other hand, the only protection we had was by my bestie so it's not like we were going out dancing on girl's night.

Ooh! Let me tell you about her.

**After finding out who she is, I've arranged a separate interview with her.**

Oh. Okay.

**Tell me about more about your working conditions.**

I don't want to say that my marriage was thanks to how cramped we were. I mean, my bestie isn't part of our relationship. But you know what they say, the highest correlating factor to love is proximity.

And even then it nearly didn't happen. Howie's too much of a romantic.

**Come again? How would his romanticsm prevent your relationship?**

Howie was completely dedicated to Bernie. He was the only male with no escape from the women surrounding him, his expertise in engineering made him a great trapper, securer and all around alpha. No matter how much effort I put into seducing him, he refused to stray from Bernie. No amount of pleading, cajoling, chicanery or even direct challenges to his manhood dissuaded him. And the fact that he never once refused me any aid in light of my actions only made me desire him more.

Bernie saw this all unfold. At first she threatened me in private, so as to not 'rock the boat'. But as our relationship grew and she realized that I saw in Howie what she did and that I was the most alone of us...things changed. We consuma

_**Dr. Wolowitz-Rostenkowski abruptly disrupts the conversation. Continuing from ou****r**** resuming.**_

Suffice it to say, we have a stable polygamous relationship. While I understand that the divorce rate for war time marriages is higher than pre-war, I have no fear of that for my own. (4)

**And your 'bestie' as it were? What was her place in your new found relationship.**

You know how she is. I don't think there's a man alive that could tame her. Even a genius, romantic hero...that yes, happens to also be an astronaut.

But I've strayed from your question.

After the safe zone was secured, the entire population got classified into their ability to add into the war effort. F-1 became trainers to get high need skills into as much of the labor force as possible: carpentry, first aid, manufacturing, etc. There was a sliding scale all the way down to F-6 for the inapplicable. DeStRes couldn't much justify patent lawyers and pornographers with zombies at the metaphorical gates. Research scientist that was anywhere from a decade to half of a century away from an engineerable application of the knowledge they obtained went one of three ways: The first was that the government didn't care, and you were an F-6 like any sports star. The second was that your work was in a field that was immediately applicable to active R&D...hence so many Silicon Valley super weapon projects that didn't really turn in results. It was the only way to maintain your research during the war. The third was that your work was so bleeding edge and crucial to the future that you yourself were a treasure to humanity. I understand that they attempted to find [name deleted], [name deleted], and even [name deleted]. None of them were.

But with our ability to predict swarm traffic coupled with our contributions to RFW and that time had shown it only took one soldier off the front lines to protect us, we were eventually classified F-2. We still are. It allows us an undeniable amount of freedom even if we get last nickel of government's dollar.

That was our little part of the war. Being huddled in a building didn't feel claustrophobic when you were pouring over pictures of the planet from orbit. We never felt isolated with Bernie Skyping RFW with our predictions as they were generated. And with my bestie, we were one thing the one thing I thought Sheldon's death had taken from me.

Safe.


End file.
